What do the Android Voice names / codes mean?

Question

I am calling the Voice.getName() method like so:

Set<Voice> voices = tts.getVoices();
String name = voice.getName();

This returns code names rather than friendly display names. What I want is a display name, but there doesn't seem to be any way to get this.

Is it possible to translate the codes into something meaningful to create user friendly names? And to eliminate duplicates? A lot sound similar - but just a little bit different.

These are some codes returned for English UK:

en-GB-language
en-gb-x-rjs-local
en-gb-x-rjs-network
en-gb-x-fis-local
en-gb-x-fis-network
en-gb-x-fis#female_1-local
en-gb-x-rjs#female_1-local
en-gb-x-rjs#female_2-local
en-gb-x-fis#female_2-local
en-gb-x-rjs#male_1-local

My thoughts so far:

• Local and network do mean what you would think. However it is not clear if they are two versions of the same voice, as they sound a bit different (not very different though).
• The rjs and fis are repeated a lot, and apply to both male and female, but only for UK English. It appears that each language has one or two different sets of 3 letter initials - maybe it is a region code.
• You might think female1 and female2 would be different voice talent, but they appear to be just very slightly different expressiveness.
• I think en-gb-x-rjs#male_1-local and en-gb-x-rjs-local are identical
• All return same Quality of 400.

Does anyone have a better understanding of these?

Answer 1

This may or may not be helpful, but for those of you not working directly with Android, and thus without access to an API that lists the voice codes, I've just found this URL on a forum thread which seems to list the URLs of the android TTS voices:

https://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/voices-list-r1.proto

Reading that as text (utf-8) gives some decoding errors, but it's enough to extract the codes:

en-GBGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/en-gb-x-fis-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice ����dBfemaleJen-gb-x-fis-phone-hmmP�X�`hen-GB #1x�$�
en-GBJhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/en-gb-x-fis-diphone-usel-r2.zvoice ؾ0���dBfemaleJen-gb-x-fis-diphone-uselP�X�`hen-GB #1x��
en-GBGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/en-gb-x-rjs-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �0���dBmaleJen-gb-x-rjs-phone-hmmP�X�`hen-GB #2x��
en-GBJhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/en-gb-x-rjs-diphone-usel-r2.zvoice ��0���dBmaleJen-gb-x-rjs-diphone-uselP�X�`hen-GB #2x���
en-USGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/en-us-x-sfg-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �*0���dBfemaleJen-us-x-sfg-phone-hmmP�X�`hren-USx�6�
en-USJhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/en-us-x-sfg-diphone-usel-r4.zvoice ��
   0���dBfemaleJen-us-x-sfg-diphone-uselP�X�`hren-USx���
de-DEGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/de-de-x-nfh-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �"0���dBfemaleJde-de-x-nfh-phone-hmmP�X�`hrde-DEx�+�
pt-BRGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/pt-br-x-afs-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice ����dBfemaleJpt-br-x-afs-phone-hmmP�X�`hrpt-BRx�#�
es-ESGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/es-es-x-ana-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �#0���dBfemaleJes-es-x-ana-phone-hmmP�X�`hres-ESx�.�
es-USGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/es-us-x-sfb-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �*0���dBfemaleJes-us-x-sfb-phone-hmmP�X�`hres-USx�6�
fr-FRGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/fr-fr-x-vlf-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �.0���dBfemaleJfr-fr-x-vlf-phone-hmmP�X�`hrfr-FRx�>�
it-ITGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/it-it-x-kda-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �,0���dBfemaleJit-it-x-kda-phone-hmmP�X�`hrit-ITx�>�
ko-KRGhttps://dl.google.com/dl/android/tts/v2/ko-kr-x-ism-phone-hmm-r2.zvoice �00���dBfemaleJko-kr-x-ism-phone-hmmP�X�`hrko-KRx�:

I still don't know what the codes mean, but at least this gives me the mapping between the language codes and the fis, rjs, etc codes, so it's a start.